Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/154

 vigorous clan life. Such conditions may be found among the Arabs of the burning deserts. The Arab, on his horse or camel, shifting from spot to spot, cannot feel or express the impersonality of clan feelings with the intensity peculiar to settled village communities. In the early poetry of the Arab clans we shall accordingly find some of the best specimens of that personal expression of the clansman's feelings which we seek to illustrate.

Marzûki, in the preface of his Commentary on the Mufaddalian Poems (so called from their collector, Al Mufaddal, who made the anthology about the year 160 of the Hejîra), tells us that a great deal of early Arab poetry owed its origin to tribal wars. "I have been told," says the Arab authority, "that Ali ben Mahdi, the Kisrawite, reported that in Attâïf there were both poetry and reciters, but not in abundance. For poetry increased only during the wars between the tribes, such as happened among the Ausites and Kasragites, and in the engagements and expeditions which were continually going on. Among the Kuraishites poetry was rare, for there were no inveterate animosities among them." The passage reminds us of our Border Ballads; but the presence of genuine clan sentiments, such as those of Blood-revenge, in the early Arab poems carries us far nearer the beginnings of literature than Chevy Chace. Some examples of this Arab poetry we shall now offer from the Hamâseh, or "Valour," an anthology so called because the first chapter contains verses on valour and manly behaviour. Collected about the year 220 of the Hejîra by Abu Tammâm, this anthology contains many short pieces of verse and fragments selected from complete odes. The collection is distributed into ten chapters, the first of which takes up